Jacksonville astronaut will 'carry the dreams of everyone' to space

Daily News Staff JDNews

Wednesday

Feb 27, 2019 at 4:20 PMFeb 27, 2019 at 4:28 PM

A Jacksonville native and NASA flight engineer is preparing to visit space.

According to a NASA space station news release, Christina Koch arrived at the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch site in Kazakhstan Tuesday. Koch is part of a three-person team alongside Commander Alexey Ovchinin and flight engineer Nick Hague who will be traveling to space in the Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft on March 14.

The expedition will last 204 days, according to a press conference held Thursday before the team arrived at the launch site.

During the conference, Koch and Hague talked about their plans to stay active on social media during the mission.

“I believe that one of the greatest honors of flying into space is not only are we lucky enough to fulfill our own dreams and accomplish the mission, but it’s also our responsibility to carry the dreams of everyone into space with us,” Koch said.

She said this sharing will come through social media and information shared with loved ones.

NASA also recorded live interviews with Koch Friday, where she addressed questions from national news stations asking about some of the challenges and training she faced to become an astronaut.

“Looking back across all those years and all those people that supported me that’s the thing that I remembered the most,” Koch said.

She said she is honored to be going to space and putting her training to use.

According to her NASA biography, Koch was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 2013 and completed astronaut candidate training in 2015. She graduated from North Carolina State University with a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and physics and a Master of Science in electrical engineering.

“I’m overwhelmed by the fact from the time I was 5 years old and I told people I wanted to be an astronaut, and none of those people discouraged me,” Koch said.

In fact, she said many of her former teachers contacted her after completing astronaut training because they remembered her childhood dream.